Alert: What's Coming for Open Source CMS in September 2011

Welcome to the August 2011 installment of our what's coming from the open source projects in the next month. If you feel that your project was left out, we invite you to email us at [email protected] to have a project representative added to the list of people we contact for updates.

Composite C1

In August, the folks at Composite C1 (news, site) focused on community feature requests. Top requested features were implemented, such as "clean" page URLs, and the ability to more easily upload images and media while editing pages. These features are currently available in beta form.

September brings a Release Candidate of Composite C1 version 3.0. Improvements for 3.0 include:

Associate a hostname with a content language

Configure the rules for creating paths

Open selection trees at the last referenced position, and auto-expand when convenient

Create new folders and upload media as part of the selection process

Set test and default values for fields and parameters much easier, with typical choices pre-selected

Insert image through the visual editor with width and height parameters

Embed HTML5 tags along with script and iframe through the visual editor's page markup

Embed form controls using the standard Insert Function dialog

Overhauled calendar control

The team got a boost of energy from Microsoft (news, site) as well. Developers within the MSDN UK team created a video tutorial on setting up a blog and gallery site using Composite C1 and off-the-shelf packages.

DotNetNuke

In August, DotNetNuke (news, site) ranked number 228 on the 30th annual Inc. 500 list. This list features the United States' fastest-growing private companies. It also ranked 23rd among the 305 in the Software Industry category, and 9th among the 161 companies in the greater San Francisco metro area.

Drupal

In August, Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal (news, site), continued the process of streamlining the development process toward Drupal 8. He announced a new set of conditions for declaring that Drupal 8 is complete, learning from issues with the condition set for Drupal 7.

He also launched the State of Drupal 2011 Survey, to help the Drupal core team and the Drupal Association better understand community needs. The last survey was held in 2008.

Also in August, Drupal companies Phase 2 Technology (news, site) and SubHub (news, site) announced the Drupal Open App Standard Initiative. The goals for this initiative are to:

Make it easier for Drupal users to extend their sites' functionality

Allow developers to create apps that work across multiple app marketplaces

This second point is key, because both companies separately implemented Drupal apps within their own ecosystems. Creating the standard, they hope, should keep the market from fragmenting.

Insight -- A dashboard providing Drupal site owners with dynamic, real-time metrics, telling them if their site elements are up to date, secure, and performing well

Drupalize.Me -- A library of more than 335 Drupal training videos from Lullabot (news, site)

SEO Grader -- An internet marketing review tool from Volacci

Blitz - A load and performance testing platform from Mu Dynamics

Acquia is also entering the Drupal apps market with an Acquia Apps Market slated for Q4 2011. This market (currently in beta) will be accessible through the Acquia Network API. While not explicitly stated in the announcement, the Drupal Open App Standard Initiative talks were "facilitated" by Robert Douglass of Acquia. This fact makes it likely that Acquia will comply with the standard as well.

August brought more Drupal partnerships in the form of Acquia and The Commerce Guys delivering Drupal Commerce, a Drupal e-commerce platform, and Acquia acquiring two services: Cyrve, which focuses on Drupal migrations, and Growing Venture Solutions, which focuses on Drupal security.

Hippo CMS

In August, the folks at Hippo CMS (news, site) received praise in Ars Logica'sCompass Guide to Web Content Management: "From early on, the vendor’s experience with large enterprises put an emphasis on multi-site, multi-lingual, multi-channel capabilities; and Hippo’s functionality here is exceptional, ranking second in the overall market."

The Hippo team also announced integration for HTML5 publishing to mobile devices such as the iPad and Android tablets. You can see a demonstration below:

It's also created a benchmark test for the number of routed websocket loopbacks HWIOS can handle per second. This test will be used going forward, to help track and further optimize HWIOS's performance.

Coming next is a websocket-enabled forum, and an upgrade to the websocket handler to the hybi-10 specification.

Joomla

In August, the Joomla! (news, site) project watched its download numbers, steadily approaching the 25 million mark. Project members also held their Joomla Leadership Summit, discussing topics ranging from leadership restructuring to communications, internationalization and the roadmap. The three leadership teams published separate and joint reports on their discussions and decisions, for those who want to catch up.

The project also announced the release of Joomla Explained, the second Joomla Press book from Open Source Matters (news, site) and Pearson Publishing. This book covers versions 1.6 and 1.7, and is available in paper and electronic formats.

Magnolia CMS

In August, the folks behind Magnolia CMS (news, site) announced that its next major release, Magnolia CMS 4.5, will be available by the end of this year. This release is considered a stepping stone toward Magnolia 5, and plans are that projects developed on 4.5 will run on 5 with no modifications.

A graphical lifecycle management tool, allowing you to choose a default lifecycle or to alter one to create a custom lifecycle

The project also released Nuxeo Flex connector 1.1, which allows Flex applications to interact with Nuxeo using the Automatic Message Format (AMF) to read, search, create and update documents stored in Nuxeo. Finally, there's a new version of FunkLoad, Nuxeo's stress testing tool.

Along with the software releases, Nuxeo also opened the beta release of a new question and answer site: Answers.nuxeo.com. This new site will supplement the existing community forums.

ocPortal

In August, the folks at ocPortal (news, site) released version 7.1.4. This bug fix release offers numerous improvements for both users and developers, such as:

Pointing the default "Front page" link to the site zone rather than the current zone

A new "tailing" parameter on the "main_countdown" block, to control date specificity

The ability to show CEDI changes for a CEDI subtree

Support for sending name and other information within the body of the newsletter signup confirmation email

Better permission handling on adding entries to catalogues

Posting forms can have the option for the main post to be blank

mojoPortal

In August, the folks at mojoPortal (news, site) focused on making it easier for people using mojoPortal in web farm configurations and Windows Azure. Changes in the works include:

Improved documentation for web farm implementers

Abstracting the filesystem for user-uploaded files

Abstracting caching to allow use of tools such as Azure Blob Storage, App Fabric Caching and Memcached

The team intends to continue this work through September, hopefully completing it by the end of the month.

Plone

In August, the Plone (news, site) community finalized the talk schedule for the Plone Conference 2011 (taking place November 1 and 2). It's also sent out a reminder that August 31 is the last day for conference training discounts.

WordPress

Quick stats include the fact that WordPress accounts for 14.7% of the top million websites globally (up from 8.5%), and that 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US run WordPress. Also, out of 18,000 responses to its first user and developer survey, 6,800 self-employed respondents were responsible for over 170,000 sites personally, charging a median hourly rate of $50.

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